How prostitution is harmful to women and limits their sexual autonomy

1.) women are having sex with complete strangers – as in, men they are not attracted to and the ‘choosy-choice’ ones make the appointments before even meeting, while the street walkers just look at them in the car to try to scope them out. let’s just say getting into cars or being in rooms with complete strangers to have sex with them – the most vulnerable thing – is a REALLY BAD IDEA.

2.) women are having sex with men their sex which they are not even attracted to, i.e. straight-for-pay, while men have all the choice of their fetish, gender, etc. which would be completely discriminatory in other jobs; if it is a service only and not sex to men, we’d see straight men paying for blowjobs from other men or women they consider not their taste or ‘ugly’ even if they’re really good at it

3.) women are engaging in sex acts they don’t want to do because the demand is fueled by porn users and the assumption of implicit consent. Changing from “sex partner” to “sex customer” is a contradiction in terms. We normally think of either person in sex as a PARTNER to the other, not a CUSTOMER of a thing.

4.) again, implicit consent and perfunctory sex which means sex is OWED and it becomes a social contract, women cannot back out of it – the case in Texas of the man who got acquitted because he killed a prostitute for trying to leave without giving sex. the issue of fake orgasms is the least of these.

4.) the demand for bareback sex or the girlfriend experience which is really men trying to put one over on women – ‘haha, i win, you HAVE to’ for a higher price. in any other job it is unthinkable to not use protection. it is ILLEGAL to knowingly give someone an STD but prostitutes have no recourse if this happens. they are the ones expected to get STD checks, not the men.

5.) prostituted women are a special class of women that exist to be scapegoats for men’s sexual guilt; hence, in any other job where rape and sexual harassment, including verbal harassment, would be legally actionable, it is not so in the sex industry. i would NOT want to be around a man whining about how frustrated he is due to rejection, he’s gonna be self-pitying and angry and bitter and not treat me well. but to some people it’s okay if it’s ‘benevolent sexism’ or misogyny that is not overtly violent or abusive.

the verbal harassment and high risk of physical violence prostitutes face should really be addressed as misogyny and “intimate partner violence,” it does a much better job than the self-defeating lib/hetfem label of “whorephobia.”

men who support the sex industry make the arguments that:

– prostitution prevents rape (meaning, ‘rape the other women’)

– watching child porn prevents pedophilia

– watching porn prevents cheating

– prostitution is a favor to wives so they don’t have to ‘put out’ for their husbands

6.) the idea that men need sex, men need it more than women, or that sex is a right (for men) that must be provided at all costs. as if women are doctors or sex/relationship therapists. in prostitution, sex is not mutually pleasurable. men think prostitutes have ‘weaponized femininity’ as if holding money over them somehow means women have the power because they are the ones providing sex…as if customers can’t ruin workers’ lives and give horrible reviews, stalk and out them.

7) women are valued only as much as they have a ‘service’ to provide or are considered ‘workers,’ not human beings; female sexual promiscuity is only socially acceptable if it can be legitimized and legalized as a “job”

8.) ‘whore’ is now considered an identity and sacred cow akin to things like race, sexual orientation, and sex rather than an attempt to reclaim a slur which is harmful by default

9.) the demand by johns is what fuels the sex industry; if there aren’t enough presumably ‘willing’ women joining, then women are recruited through trafficking via deception, bribery with visas, etc. it is a privilege to NOT be prostituted, especially for minority and migrant women. the idea that most women in the sex industry are there by totally free choice is a farce; the fact is that the ‘supply’ would be provided at all costs. the gender-wage gap, discrimination of immigrants, racial fetishization, and porn are all underlying factors that pressure women into the sex industry.

Holocaust victims and their descendants have repeatedly asked men to stop using this pathetic reductio ad Hitlerum. Being a feminist and speaking out against misogyny is in no way comparable to a Nazi genocide of Jews and undesirables. Speaking of which, many feminists are also Jewish, such as the late Andrea Dworkin. The irony of the term “feminazi” being coined by Rush Limbaugh escapes you. If you want to talk about the oppression of women by men and the femicide that has resulted, that is a different story. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.